Oh Tim Burton, we love your strange characters and your twisted sense of storytelling. With Frankenweenie, you do not disappoint to give us what we expect. A young boy brings his dead dog back to life? Right up your alley. I just can’t believe I didn’t hear Johnny Depp somewhere in there.

Frankenweenie is the story of young Victor Frankenstein, a boy with no friends and an affinity for science, film making and horror movies starring his lifetime companion, Sparky. Of course, nothing is well for long in the Tim Burton universe and Sparky is tragically run over. Overwhelmed by grief, Victor becomes determined to have his only friend back the only way he know how, Frankenstein style.

While Frankenweenie fails to develop deeper characters and a straightforward storyline, it does however make up for this ten times by its creativity. Frankenweenie is a tribute to all old school horror movies, in quirky and adorable ways. All that said though, I’m not sure how appropriate Frankenweenie is for kids. Death is obviously a huge theme in this movie, as well as the multitude of scary characters. There was quite a few parts where I jumped myself. In my personal opinion, Frankenweenie is not too dark, but just enough for this Halloween season.

My final thought are this, Frankenweenie is great for die-hard Tim Burton fans, old horror movie fans, and kids older than 7. Even though I like Burton, I can’t help feeling like I’ve seen this all before. I feel like you could literally copy/paste his other plots into Frankenweenie. I found myself a little bored and checking the time to get out, and after talking to others in the theater, most of us agreed that most parent would end up feeling the same.

Frankenweenie is rated PG for thematic elements, scary images and action. I find the PG rating is a little deceiving. There’s no profane language or anything but it is full of more adult themes. I wouldn’t take anyone younger than 7 or older than 15.

For a decent time to kill an afternoon, I give Frankenweenie 2 out of 5 dug up graves.